I Survived The Warrior Dash

The past Saturday (Oct 1), I ran in my last race of the season; the Warrior Dash. I’ve run in several trail/obstacle races and this is the toughest I’ve run in to date. Teresa told me that this is the first one she noticed that I showed signs of being tired afterward. It was tough. The t-shirt and metal I have from the race has “I survived the Warrior Dash” and I can say that this is more than a motto.

The race is only 3.5 miles but the obstacles are tough. The race is focused on showing your toughness like a Viking so the names of the obstacles reflect this ideal. The obstacles included Barricade Beakdown which is hurling over 8 4-foot walls with 8 crawling under barbed wire walls; Rubber Forest which is tires hanging and you run through pushing them out of the way; Road Rage which were three cars parked bummer to bummer and you had to climb over them but before and after the cars there were tires you had to run through like football practice; the next obstacle was, Chaotic Cross over which was crawling over tangled nets (the nets were 8 feet over the ground); Deadweight Drifter which was wading through waist to chest deep water and climbing over three huge logs; Teetering Traverse which was balancing up and down 6 inch beams; Deadman’s Drop (the craziest one for me) which was a 12 foot high wall you climbed up easy but on the other side you only had a 2x4 to hang from and drop 3 feet to the ground; Great Warrior Wall which was a 10 foot wall with a rope you had to climb up it (the other side was some slats the climb down); Rio Run which was at least 100 yards of wading through waist deep water of the James River ; Cargo Climb which was 15 foot high climb up and down; Warrior Roast which was leaping over two fire pits (yes fire pits); and lastly crawling through a mud pit. There were total of 12 obstacles that are designed to kill you or challenge you.

All and all it was a fun and tough race. The night before, I got an e-mail saying that Charles City would not issue the race a liquor permit so no beer would be severed. It was no big deal to me because I don’t drink but since the whole race centered on being a warrior beer and turkey wings were to be served. Since no beer was allowed, our parking was free ($10 savings) and I can run the race at another location this year or the 2012 races. We will see.

Below are some photos Teresa took. The photos from the official race will be ready after Oct 7. I’ll post those on Facebook.